“The Lehigh Valley has been one of the most active among railroads attempting to end the abuse, but the leniency of local magistrates has operated in the tramps’ favor. To put a tramp in jail is expensive for a small community; the authorities usually content themselves by telling the offenders to ‘move on.’ Thus he is merely dumped upon some other community. The practice works as an endless chain—each town passing on its tramps and in turn receiving the tramps that have been passed on by other towns. “Some charity organizations have interested themselves in the problem, and seek to co-operate with the railroads in bringing trespassers to justice. Compulsory labor of some kind it is thought would be the most powerful deterrent, but that remedy meets the opposition of the labor unions; they say it would be putting ‘convict labor’ into competition with honest workingmen. A helpful move would be for the state to relieve local governments from the expense of punishing offenders, as the cost of keeping a tramp supplies the most powerful motive for the magistrate to let him go.” In this connection, the annual report of the New York State Board of Charities is significant. It renews its recommendation, made to the legislature of 1910, for the establishment of a farm colony for tramps and vagrants. It points out that these classes are now kept practically in idleness in the penitentiaries, jails and workhouses at an annual cost of $2,000,000, whereas, following the example of a number of the countries in Europe, they could be humanely maintained and cared for in farm colonies, which could be made self-supporting through their labor. * * * * * _Public Defenders Wanted in Cleveland._—The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, Ohio, is reviving a plan for the appointment of assistants to the county prosecutor, whose work shall be the defense in common pleas court of persons unable to employ counsel. Under the present system the judges of the common pleas court appoint counsel for impecunious defendants in criminal cases. The ground that better talent will be thus. The appointment of special public defenders is urged on the ground that better talent will be thus secured, and the interests of accused persons better safeguarded. A plan for the appointment of such public defenders for impecunious persons tried in the police courts was recently rejected in Cleveland. The ground taken was that the so-called prosecutor is theoretically charged not with prosecuting the accused, but with bringing out all the facts in his case, both those favorable and unfavorable. The “prosecutor” was, therefore, held to be both prosecutor and defender. _A “Going Concern.”_—According to the Detroit (Mich.) _Journal_, the city of Detroit has derived $399,000 profit from the House of Correction in the last twelve years. The newspaper account reads as follows: